The conspiracy theory has been widely discredited and debunked. It has been described as false by the fact-checking website snopes.com and The New York Times.[40][51][52]

Other criticisms of the conspiracy theory came from the New York Observer,[53] The Washington Post,[54] The Independent in London,[55] The Huffington Post,[56] The Washington Times,[11] Los Angeles Times,[57] Fox News[58] and the Miami Herald.[59] The Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia characterized the matter as "fictitious".[59]

Ben Swann of CBS 46 discussed the conspiracy theory on his program, "Reality Check". Swann concluded that "there is no proof there is a child sex ring being operated out of a D.C. pizza parlor" but wondered why no formal investigation had taken place.[60]

Much of the purported evidence cited by the conspiracy theory's proponents had been taken from entirely different sources and made to appear as if they supported the conspiracy.[3] Images of children of family and friends of the pizzeria's staff were taken from social media sites such as Instagram and claimed to be photos of victims.[51] The Charlotte Observer noted the diverse group of sources that had debunked the conspiracy theory, pointing out this included the Fox News Channel in addition to The New York Times.[36]

On December 10, 2016, The New York Times published an article that analyzed the claims that the theory proposed.[2] They emphasized that:

The theory claimed "cheese pizza" was code for "child pornography," since the term had been used in this context previously on the website shhhh. This was extrapolated to other mentions of food in non-political emails. However, as the Times pointed out, the "Podesta brothers were famous in Washington circles for their Italian cooking and big salon and fund-raising dinners, often cooked by their mother."

Theorists linked the conspiracy to Comet Ping Pong, through similarities between company logos and symbols related to Satanism and pedophilia. However, The Times noted that striking similarities may also be found in the logos of a number of unrelated companies, such as AOL, Time Warner, and MSN.

A photograph was circulated purporting to show President Barack Obama playing ping pong with a child inside Comet Ping Pong. The original picture hangs framed in the White House, where it was taken.

Theorists claimed an underground network beneath Comet Ping Pong; however, the restaurant in-fact has no basement, and the picture used to support this claim was taken from another facility.

Theorists claimed to have a picture of restaurant owner Alefantis wearing a t-shirt endorsing pedophilia. However, the image was of another person entirely, and the shirt, which read "I [heart symbol] L’Enfant," was actually a reference to the L’Enfant Cafe-Bar in DC, whose owner was pictured in the image, and which itself was named after Pierre Charles L'Enfant, designer of much of the layout of Washington, DC.

Theorists claimed John and Tony Podesta kidnapped Madeleine McCann using police sketches which were, in fact, two sketches of the same suspect taken from the descriptions of two eye witnesses. Furthermore, the claim that the brothers were in Portugal at the time of the kidnapping was sourced only to Victurus Libertas, notable for, among other things, suggesting that the queen of England is a reptilian alien.

No alleged victims have come forward, nor has any physical evidence been found.[61]

What was "Chapman" (I.e., King) carrying when he killed John Lennon? A copy of Catcher in The Rye, by J.D. Salinger.

Stephen King was wildly jealous of Salinger, considered to be an actual man of letters, unlike King. Thus, his desire to forever associate Salinger with the murder of John Lennon.

Trump, as we all know, is a New Yorker, and was in New York when Lennon was murdered.

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Throughout the novel, Holden seems to be excluded from and victimized by the world around him. As he says to Mr. Spencer, he feels trapped on “the other side” of life, and he continually attempts to find his way in a world in which he feels he doesn’t belong.

As the novel progresses, we begin to perceive that Holden’s alienation is his way of protecting himself. Just as he wears his hunting hat (see “Symbols,” below) to advertise his uniqueness, he uses his isolation as proof that he is better than everyone else around him and therefore above interacting with them. The truth is that interactions with other people usually confuse and overwhelm him, and his cynical sense of superiority serves as a type of self-protection. Thus, Holden’s alienation is the source of what little stability he has in his life.

As readers, we can see that Holden’s alienation is the cause of most of his pain. He never addresses his own emotions directly, nor does he attempt to discover the source of his troubles. He desperately needs human contact and love, but his protective wall of bitterness prevents him from looking for such interaction. Alienation is both the source of Holden’s strength and the source of his problems. For example, his loneliness propels him into his date with Sally Hayes, but his need for isolation causes him to insult her and drive her away. Similarly, he longs for the meaningful connection he once had with Jane Gallagher, but he is too frightened to make any real effort to contact her. He depends upon his alienation, but it destroys him.

The Painfulness of Growing Up

According to most analyses, The Catcher in the Rye is a bildungsroman, a novel about a young character’s growth into maturity. While it is appropriate to discuss the novel in such terms, Holden Caulfield is an unusual protagonist for a bildungsroman because his central goal is to resist the process of maturity itself. As his thoughts about the Museum of Natural History demonstrate, Holden fears change and is overwhelmed by complexity. He wants everything to be easily understandable and eternally fixed, like the statues of Eskimos and Indians in the museum. He is frightened because he is guilty of the sins he criticizes in others, and because he can’t understand everything around him. But he refuses to acknowledge this fear, expressing it only in a few instances—for example, when he talks about sex and admits that “[s]ex is something I just don’t understand. I swear to God I don’t” (Chapter 9).

Instead of acknowledging that adulthood scares and mystifies him, Holden invents a fantasy that adulthood is a world of superficiality and hypocrisy (“phoniness”), while childhood is a world of innocence, curiosity, and honesty. Nothing reveals his image of these two worlds better than his fantasy about the catcher in the rye: he imagines childhood as an idyllic field of rye in which children romp and play; adulthood, for the children of this world, is equivalent to death—a fatal fall over the edge of a cliff. His created understandings of childhood and adulthood allow Holden to cut himself off from the world by covering himself with a protective armor of cynicism. But as the book progresses, Holden’s experiences, particularly his encounters with Mr. Antolini and Phoebe, reveal the shallowness of his conceptions.

The Phoniness of the Adult World

“Phoniness,” which is probably the most famous phrase from The Catcher in the Rye, is one of Holden’s favorite concepts. It is his catch-all for describing the superficiality, hypocrisy, pretension, and shallowness that he encounters in the world around him. In Chapter 22, just before he reveals his fantasy of the catcher in the rye, Holden explains that adults are inevitably phonies, and, what’s worse, they can’t see their own phoniness. Phoniness, for Holden, stands as an emblem of everything that’s wrong in the world around him and provides an excuse for him to withdraw into his cynical isolation.

Though oversimplified, Holden’s observations are not entirely inaccurate. He can be a highly insightful narrator, and he is very aware of superficial behavior in those around him. Throughout the novel he encounters many characters who do seem affected, pretentious, or superficial—Sally Hayes, Carl Luce, Maurice and Sunny, and even Mr. Spencer stand out as examples. Some characters, like Maurice and Sunny, are genuinely harmful. But although Holden expends so much energy searching for phoniness in others, he never directly observes his own phoniness. His deceptions are generally pointless and cruel and he notes that he is a compulsive liar. For example, on the train to New York, he perpetrates a mean-spirited and needless prank on Mrs. Morrow. He’d like us to believe that he is a paragon of virtue in a world of phoniness, but that simply isn’t the case. Although he’d like to believe that the world is a simple place, and that virtue and innocence rest on one side of the fence while superficiality and phoniness rest on the other, Holden is his own counterevidence. The world is not as simple as he’d like—and needs—it to be; even he cannot adhere to the same black-and-white standards with which he judges other people.

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Holden’s Red Hunting Hat

The red hunting hat is one of the most recognizable symbols from twentieth-century American literature. It is inseparable from our image of Holden, with good reason: it is a symbol of his uniqueness and individuality. The hat is outlandish, and it shows that Holden desires to be different from everyone around him. At the same time, he is very self-conscious about the hat—he always mentions when he is wearing it, and he often doesn’t wear it if he is going to be around people he knows. The presence of the hat, therefore, mirrors the central conflict in the book: Holden’s need for isolation versus his need for companionship.